May not be long before shops go cashless. With increasing numbers of people using the magic plastic - cash may fade out over time. Also, bank notes (at least in the UK) sometimes have serial numbers so it isn't wholly foolproof.
In the US, banks and most businesses who accept cash track the serial numbers of 50 and 100 denominated bills. I would imagine that banks keep a handle on the serials of their 20s as well, which are by far the bills most commonly dispensed from ATMs.
Presumably banks have something built into their money-counters and ATMs, but how does a regular cash business do this type of tracking? (I know personally several that do not.) For those that do track these, why?
My work experience includes working in retail where we hand recorded the numbers on large bills each night and in the morning. I'm pretty sure banks track these numbers; what makes you believe yours don't?
But that's completely useless for this purpose unless the bank supplying the cash also recorded the numbers, and "mostly harmless" even if they were (see below).
What makes me sure the banks I use don't suitably track the numbers is that I show up to them with $20s just acquired from an ATM (saves time) and they don't take any actions that would allow recording of the numbers of the $100s they give me in return. The bills just come out of a slot in the usual drawer, the teller only count them by hand to make sure they're all $100s and that she's giving me the right number of them. I'd add that many people would notice if she ran them through an OCR machine before handing them over....
What you're talking about sounds more anti-counterfeiting efforts, $100s having of course the highest payoff, and at worst case they only reveal that person X shopped at that establishment the day before. Which I suspect is not typically damning, e.g. that I shopped at a grocery store without any details as to what I bought suggests that I'm a human that eats food, little more.
I wouldn't say I'm "paranoid" about this sort of thing, i.e. I pay cash locally more to avoid credit card fraud than to keep details about myself private, but I read the appropriate SF when I was young, and being a hacker in the sense of this forum I pay close attention to these things. As of yet in my corner of SW Missouri there's no sign of them.
The last time I with Drew a large sum from the bank, he did run it through accounting machine and most of those have OCR abilities.
Businesses I've been involved with write down the serial numbers of high denomination bills when cash drawers are filled. I wouldn't be surprised if banks were aware of which serials were in their cash drawers for inventory purposes basically.
It's true that the only real tracking that goes on with serial numbers currently to catch criminals is recorded cereals in bank robberies and black market transactions. However, the capability is there to construct some small amount of conclusions about regular people based on where bills go. I wasn't saying it's widely in use for everyday surveillance.
I don't know if I'm missing something here...
but what's wrong with running your laptop directly off the mains without a battery and unplugging the cord if necessary so the computer shuts down?
Nokia 105 here as well. I love how so many people on HN have 'dumbphones'. It's gone through so much more abuse than a smartphone would be capable of taking.
I guess you just summed up the benefit of having a non-specific HN in your last sentence.
Serendipity has led me to find all sorts of wacky stuff here that I would never have found otherwise.
Perhaps they may be some sort of benefit for having a "HN for [insert topic here]" for people to find a narrower information set. Personally, I like it as it is and one can always use the search function to target posts with keywords
I don't really see how people have down-voted you other than the fact that they don't agree with your opinion and I really don't think that should be an excuse to just grey out someone's opinion unless it is downright stupid/misinformed/ or extremely offensive.
Is it not better to have the opinion visible and actually have a constructive argument about that vs down-voting it to the point at it is barely readable.
According to the UK agency "...privacy has never been an absolute right and the debate about this should become a reason for postponing urgent and difficult decisions"
This article seems like a clever bit of propoganda to justify increasing surveillance
I'd recommend this book by the way:
'Time to Eat the Dog?: The Real guide to Sustainable Living' by Thames & Hudson - search it up if you want a read.
We essentially need to return to a lifestyle that is described by the 'Lark Rise to Candleford' Trilogy, with comparatively recent local communities in 'developed' countries growing their own food, helping each other, making their own entertainment, travelling little, and generally living within the resources of their immediate environment. Such a way of life could be said to reduce our land needs and potentially allow us to set aside half the planet.
Whilst the solution is arguably obvious, with the advocation of mass-consumerism and with many people having a vested interest in the continuous extraction of fossil fuels - that change will always be thwarted.
With regards to taking a dump, you could use one of those self contained composting toilets - maybe even using the digested remains as methane gas for cooking ;)
